This cry of pain was not quite causeless, for Martha was trembling from head to foot, and actually only saved herself from falling by a mechanical clutch at something like a horse's tail. With many excuses, and in a voice broken by regrets, she resumed her task with a vigorous effort for success, while Mrs. Ricketts and Purvis exchanged glances of supreme contempt.
“I speak to you, Martha,” resumed she, “for your own sake. You cannot see what all the world sees,—the sinful selfishness of your nature,——a vice, I must say, the less pardonable that you live beneath the shadow of my counsels!—Scroope, don't creak that chair,—sit upon that stool there.—Now that we shall probably spend two months here—”
“Here! Do—do you m-mean here?” cried Purvis.
“Of course I mean here, sir. There's nothing in the shape of a lodging to be had under three or four hundred francs a month. This is a very sweet place; and when the old gentleman can be induced to take a room in the town for himself, and that his daughter learns, as she will,—though certainly not from Martha,—what is due to me, it will be comfortable and convenient. We'll ask the Princess, too, to spend a week with us; for who knows, in the present state of politics, to what corner of Germany we may yet be reduced to fly!”
“How will you m-m-manage with Haggerstone and the rest, when they arrive, sister?”
“Easily enough. I 'll show them that it's for their advantage that we are here. It is true that we agreed to take a house together; but every plan is modified by the events of the campaign. Petrolaffsky will be content if Mr. Dalton plays piquet; the Colonel will like his claret and Burgundy; and Foglass will be pleased with the retirement that permits him to prosecute his attentions to Martha.”
Poor Martha blushed crimson at the tone rather, even than the words of the speech; for, when nothing else offered, it was the practice of Mrs. Ricketts to insinuate coquetry as among her sister's defects.
“You needn't look so much confused, my dear,” resumed the torturer; “I 'm certain it's not the first affair of the kind you've known.”
“Oh, sister!” cried Martha, in a voice of almost entreaty.
“Not that I think there would be anything unsuitable in the match; he is probably fifty-eight or nine,—sixty at most,——and, excepting deafness and the prosy tendency natural to his time of life, pretty much like everybody else.”